


The Little More (Uxbridge, 1922)

by Cuddlewumpus



Series: Tales from the RAF [1]
Category: Lawrence of Arabia (1962), The Mint - T. E. Lawrence
Genre: Illness, J.H. Ross, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:41:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuddlewumpus/pseuds/Cuddlewumpus
Summary: Lawrence is sick, and Hut #4 takes care of its own.
Series: Tales from the RAF [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1609984
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	The Little More (Uxbridge, 1922)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerdypipsqueak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdypipsqueak/gifts).



The day started badly. 

Everyone had been up past lights out, making merry for no real reason other than to break the monotony of life at the Depot. The morning was all sleeplessness. Especially, Sailor saw, the 'old man' of the Flight, Ross. Ross had a certain stiffness to him that wasn't normal, even for one of the oldest men in Hut 4. No, this wasn't from a late night or lack of sleep - Ross barely slept anyway- this was something else. 

Maybe Ross was coming down with something, Sailor wondered. It didn’t matter, they still had about six minutes to get dressed and out for PT. Sailor grabbed his shirt and headed for the sinks. Corporal Hemmings had the dawn PT this morning. None of the recruits liked Hemmings, and the feeling was mutual. 

Sailor knew the flight was in for trouble the second he saw Stiffy come walking towards them. Their sergeant, ‘Taffy’ Jenkins, had warned them first thing this morning that Stiffy was out for blood, and oh had he been right. Another instructor, Corporal Hardy, had tried to resign first thing after dawn and the Adjunct had refused him. As a result, their drill master, Stiffy -- a right shit that one! -- was putting them through their drills at break-neck speeds looking for failure. 

He didn’t find any, and Sailor was secretly pleased. 

“A very promising lot,” Stiffy said to Sergeant Jenkins, away from the men, but still within earshot of a few, Sailor among them. He began a slow walk along the flight, a not-quite inspection, where he could better ‘zero in’ on the various minor infractions that would gain a man a punishment detail. 

Very quickly, Stiffy zeroed in on Ross, one of his favorite targets, and Sailor stifled a groan. 'Shit,' he thought. 'Ross is already sicker than a dog.' Stiffy, however, didn't keep his attention on Ross for long. Garner was in his sights as well. Sailor felt bad for Garner; his wife had left him by letter a week ago, and Garner was still raw over it. Sailor quickly realized what Stiffy was up to. For some reason, he hated blonds. Both men were, Ross being extremely so, nearly white haired when training had begun. 

"Send those men to the rear!" Stiffy cried. "White hair, white liver," he said over his shoulder to Taffy. "Those are the first sort to run in a fight." As Sailor watched Ross and Garner move to the rear rank of the flight, something told him that Ross had probably never run from a fight in his life. 

As the day progressed, things just went from bad to worse. 

By unspoken agreement, the rear rank took care of its own, and Sailor could see the men on either side of Ross; Garner and Dickson, taking care that he didn’t lag or trip during the forced marches inflicted by Corporal Hardy. At one point, Sailor could hear Dickson mutter at Ross, "Don’t make me sic Taffy on ya, Cough Drop,” to keep Ross moving during the drills. The whole hut knew that the nickname was an insult to Ross’ posh accent, but the man had never taken it that way, instead keeping to it with an odd affection. 

Corporal Hardy was merciless today, on account of being on Stiffy’s bad side -- again -- but the rear rank had nothing to fear today. Hardy was so short, even shorter than Ross if that were possible, that he’d never been able to see the furthest rank except from atop a reviewing platform. Ross was safe there, and with looks alone Sailor had communicated to the other men to keep an eye on Ross as the flight marched their way to the rifle range. 

The RAF called it ‘Musketry,‘ but there were no muskets involved. Instead, the men were given weapons left from stores not used during the war, and given the barest of training in their use. Each man was required to fire six shots, in sets of three, at differing distances. No one in the flight was that good yet. Each man would shoot in turn according to his name. 

Finally came Ross's turn, and Sailor was greatly concerned. Ross was not the best shot on a good day, but as the day had progressed and he'd become sicker and sicker... God, he could get someone killed! But Ross approached the line, checked the weapon, sighted in and...

All six shots found their marks. Perfectly. The whole flight was silent. No one could shoot like that, not with those run down SMLEs. Yet Ross had done it like he'd been doing it all his life. The entire flight looked on in awe. Ross cleared the weapon, put it back on the table in its proper place and stepped back to be swallowed up by the flight, not saying a word. 

'Holy Hell,' Sailor thought. 

Musketry ended late, and Hardy was getting the tar stripped from him for it from Stiffy. It would have been gratifying to watch if Sailor hadn’t known they were going to get the bad end of it. Stiffy had been upset with Hardy over drilling them out of his view behind the cookhouse and now he and Stiffy were in a back and forth with the flight right in the middle. The contest of wills ended with the flight being used as a marching prop in a protracted battle on their way to the gymnasium. 

‘Gym must be a special kind of Hell for Ross‘, Sailor decided to himself. 

The man barely tolerated it when he was well, but as sick as he appeared to be at this moment, Sailor wasn't sure how he was still standing. He noticed Garner and Hoxton sticking close by, and a silent question from Sailor in their direction was met with a nod from Garner and a shrug from Hoxton. Ross was doing okay, but for how long was anyone's guess. So far, the instructor hadn't noticed anything.

When gym was dismissed and the men were given leave to head back to the hut, the men of Hut 4 all walked together slowly, as a group, with Ross buried in the middle, staying upright by some invisible force. Sailor walked next to him, with a few of the others flanking, keeping an eye out for Stiffy or Hardy or anyone else who might notice Ross’s weakened state before arriving back at the hut. 

As soon as the hut doors closed behind them, Sailor grabbed Ross with an arm around his waist and steered him towards his bunk. As he went, he started shouting orders to the rest of the flight. “Lofty, Fane, Gaby -- get over here and help me! Park, Madden, Hoxton, get some blankets! Cook -- get some cool water and as many rags as ya can! He’s burning up!”

As they dropped Ross on his bunk, the four men started stripping him out of his sweat drenched clothing. The older man didn’t protest at all, so unaware of his surroundings as he was. Sailor was unbuttoning his shirt when he noticed the strip of a scar curling over Ross’s grossly deformed collarbone. With the shirt off, next came the thin undershirt. As he tugged it up, Sailor was stopped mid-motion by what he saw. 

Dozens of scars ran up, down and across Ross’s back, from below the beltline up to the base of his neck. One even curled around his side and led to more; a set of parallel scars on his ribcage. They were white; deep, old scars that must have been Hell on Earth to endure when they were inflicted.

Sailor quickly pulled the undershirt off and manhandled Ross into a clean one that Fane had thrown on the bunk. As he did so he saw Gaby stopped in the midst of putting Ross’ boots down at the end of the bunk. He had one boot in his hand and he was staring in horror at the scars on Ross’s back, still slightly visible through the thin material.

“Hey, Gaby-girl,” Sailor said sharply. “Eyes up! There’s nothing to see, you get me?” 

The young man swallowed once, twice, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said weakly. “I got you. Nothing to see.”

Sailor looked around the interior of the hut. Even those who weren’t helping Ross were watching the proceedings, and all had noticed the scars. Sailor could hear the questions spoken under breath. ‘How’d Rossie get those?’ ‘Jesus Christ! What the Hell did that to ‘im?’ 

Sailor raised his voice for the whole hut to hear. “This goes for all of ya: Ain’t nothing here to see, and you didn’t see nothing. Got me? Nothing no man here ain’t got himself.” He chuckled, trying to break the mood. “Except maybe Gaby here. I don’t think she’s got ‘em.”

The hut chuckled and disbursed into small groups, no one willing to be caught staring at what was going on at Ross’ bunk. 

In the meantime, Fane and Lofty had succeeded in getting Ross into clean breeches and together the men managed to put him to bed. Park, Madden and Hoxton had grabbed a half a dozen blankets and piled them at the foot of Ross’ bunk. The old man’s eyes were closed, already lost in exhausted unconsciousness. 

“Right,” Sailor said, looking at the five men around him. “We take turns keeping an eye on him. Anything goes squiff, put out a shout.”

“Sailor!” It was Gaby’s voice, panicked. It had only been an hour or two since they’d put Ross to bed. 

Sailor ran to the side of Ross’s bunk where Gaby sat, to see Ross in the middle of some kind of fit. His whole body was shaking, his breathing erratic. Sailor had seen this before, with high fevers, but not this quickly. 

Sailor grabbed two of the blankets from the foot of the bed and buried Ross beneath them. Grabbing one of the rags in the bucket of water, he wiped down Ross’s face and neck several times, trying to bring his temperature down. 

After a moment, the shaking ceased. 

Sailor stood up, looked down at Gaby. “Keep an eye on him, Gaby-girl. If it happens again, holler.”

From the other side of the hut, Dickson looked up from a book -- one of Ross’s, no doubt -- and regarded Sailor coolly. “Aren’t you going to send for a medic? Man’s damn sick, he is. Should be in hospital.”

Sailor turned to face Dickson. “You know what they’ll do. They’ll drum him out as unfit. You know Ross, you know what that’ll do to ‘im.” 

Dickson shrugged. “Better to boot the old Cough Drop than watch ‘im drop dead.”

The next hour passed with barely a sound from the flight, everyone’s attention focusing on how Ross was doing. That was why, when the second fit hit him, everyone saw. Sailor was sitting near the head of the bunk when it hit, fast and with no warning.

It was no more intense than the first, except that in the throws of it, Ross started muttering in one of those strange languages he sometimes spoke in his sleep. China had sworn he’d heard Ross speak Turkish once, but Sailor had thought him full of shit. Now, though, hearing the strange words himself, he wasn’t so sure. 

However, the second fit had sparked a debate among the men of Hut 4 concerning Ross’s condition. The hut was divided about getting a medic in, or waiting it out. 

Sailor was for leaving him be and letting him get better on his own. He knew Ross was a tough ‘old man’ but he also knew that there were some things that just couldn’t be waited out. 

"If he's not any better by First Post, we'll at least get the Sergeant then? C'mon, Sailor! Look at him! The bloke's suffering, can't you see that?" Dickson said, sitting on a bunk on the other side of the room. 

Sailor contemplated, then finally nodded his agreement. "If he’s not any better by First, we'll get the Sergeant. But not Stiffy! Fuck that cunt! We'll get Taffy. But only if he gets worse, or nothing changes by First Post."

Cook came up from his bunk to tap Sailor on the shoulder. “Move your arse, man. I’ve got the watch.”

Everyone in the hut watched the clock, or watched Ross. As it drew nearer to First Post, Sailor came around to check on Ross, and was pleased to see that he no longer looked quite so bad. He was muttering to himself in what sounded like German this time, but he was also sweating, which made sense being buried under about seven blankets.  
“How’s he doing, Cook?” 

Cook lifted a hand to Ross’s forehead. “He’s definitely cooler than he was. I think he’ll be right in a bit.” As if to give weight to the words, Ross twisted a bit under the blankets. It was the first movement he’d shown that wasn’t a violent shudder since he’d fallen ill. 

“Good man,” Sailor said, looking down at Ross. 

When it became obvious that Ross would be waking up soon, Cook excused himself from the hut and went down to the gate post, to the mess cart set there for the watchstanders and late-comers, and came away with a tin mug of tea and a sausage roll. He knew Ross has an aversion to meat, but it was unavoidable. He put the mug and plate on top of a footlocker near the hut‘s furnace, and sat back down at Ross’s side.

Cook poked Ross awake. The hut lights were still on, but wouldn’t be for much longer. As Ross blearily blinked his eyes, Cook leaned over, and in his sailor’s bellow, called into Ross’s ears “Scran up!”

Ross lifted his head, to have Cook bring up the tin mug of tea and the roll, still mostly warm. “What’s all this in aid of?” Ross asked, feeling a bit thickheaded. 

Cook scratched his cheek. “Well, you’re a bit crabbed up, mate.” 

Ross looked around, noting the darkness outside. “And the time?”

“It’s gone rounds, long ago,” Cook responded. So, nearly ten at night. He lifted the tin of tea into Ross’s hands. “Here you go, mate. Have a swig.” 

Ross sipped at the tea, and took a bite of the roll. As he did, Last Post sounded. After he had finished the roll and tea, Cook stepped away with the dishes. Sailor stood up from his own bunk and wandered over. 

“Could I borrow that Don Quixote off ya, Ross?” he said as a way of conversing. 

Ross nodded, tilting his head towards where the book was kept. “Of course, Sailor.” Ross sounded weak, and still looked drawn out. 

“Are you going to go off sick tomorrow, Ross? I really think you ought.” Sailor’s voice was soft, not it’s usual ear splitting pitch. “You had a few fever fits. Pretty bad ones. Scared us half to death, man. You were drenched to the skin when we stripped you down.”

Ross blinked tired eyes, still adjusting to being awake. “It’s just a touch of malaria, Sailor,” he said. “That’s all.”

“ ‘That’s all,’ he says.” Sailor sounded exasperated. “God’s love man, why do you do this to yourself?”

Ross just took a deep breath and sighed, settling down back into the nest of blankets. 

“Why not?”

**Author's Note:**

> Some of the spoken lines in this story are directly quoted from “The Mint”. This is intentional. 
> 
> It is also intentionally disjointed in places. I attempted, as much as I could, to imitate the style in which parts of The Mint were written. This is an adaptation of Section 2’s Chapter 13, and so I tried to adapt the style used by Lawrence/Ross in the chapter.
> 
> Lawrence’s marksmanship, even after Arabia, is well documented. The SMLE he carried during the Arab Revolt (a gift from Feisal) is in the Imperial War Museum. 
> 
> And Gaby is referred to with feminine pronouns on multiple occasions, even by Lawrence. He apparently took it in good stride. 
> 
> Regarding the fits: Lawrence refers to his ‘shivers’ numerous times throughout both The Mint and The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. He is known to have been a lifelong sufferer of malarial fevers, which can present with seizures. I have chosen to believe that these are what his ‘shivers’ were, because they so alarmed his companions, both Arab and English.


End file.
